WORSHIP LEADERS
WHY MOST WORSHIP LEADERS FEEL STUCK ( AND 7 BABY STEPS TO GET UNSTUCK ) | Jon Nicol
See if this sounds familiar …
As the worship leader , every year in late November , you stop all training and forward progress with your team and focus exclusively on Advent . Then , almost as quickly as Christmas crept up on you , BAM ! It ' s done . You move into that liminal space — that " nothing burger " — between Christmas and New Year .
You want to get excited about the new year ahead , but Christmas has left your emotional and spiritual gas tank almost on ' E .' If you look back over this year , you see some good things .
Some musical growth .
Relationships strengthened .
A new team member or two .
But nothing like you wanted .
You vow to start this new year stronger . But , you then find yourself phoning in most of January since you ' ve only partially recovered from a crazy Christmas season . It ' s just easier to keep the status quo .
Then , before you can get any momentum to develop your team , Lent looms on the horizon , and you ' ve gotta start planning Easter . It ' ll be another crazy holiday season that halts team development and burns you out .
Even though Christmas and Easter seasons are only about two months of the year , they seem to consume so much more than that . And when you do get time to focus on growing your team musically , spiritually , and / or relationally , it doesn ' t feel like you make much headway because of all the other ministry demands throughout the year .
You feel stuck .
Does any of this resonate at all ? If it does , please know that I want to help you get unstuck . Keep reading .
WHAT ' S WRONG ? One of the biggest reasons you probably feel stuck is because , regardless of the season , you ' re spending too much time on " this Sunday " and not enough time building your team for the long term .
The push for excellence every Sunday actually keeps you from developing a more excellent team . Let me say that again because it ' s key :
The push for excellence every Sunday actually keeps you from developing a more excellent team .
I know that sounds a little counterintuitive . But think about it for a moment , and you ' ll probably see it ' s true to some extent on your team . You and your team spend most of your time making ' this Sunday ' sound good rather than building for the future .
We ' ll come back to your team in a moment , but first , let ' s tackle that ' time ' issue . It ' s not just about " I don ' t have enough time to develop my team ." I ' m going to go out on a limb and say that you ' re not taking enough time to take care of yourself .
• You rarely get off the platform to worship with your family .
• You definitely don ' t take enough ' rest Sundays ' ( where you truly take off a Sunday and are not at church ).
• And the time-off you do take requires copious amounts of work to get someone else ready to lead . Few vacations have actually given you enough time to truly unwind . You ' re likely operating at some level of burnout . You might still be highly functional . But if you keep up this pace , you ' ll soon be highly crispy — and not able to function at all .
Part of the reason you don ' t take enough time is that the leaders you ' re developing aren ' t moving along quickly enough . You just don ' t feel super comfortable letting them take on more responsibility .
And then there are your team members . Let ' s get back to them . You love them , but sometimes you don ' t like them . The whole " pursuing excellence " that you ' ve been talking about seems to fall on deaf ears .
A few of your team get it — they show up prepared and want to get better as a team . But others are just … what ' s the right word ?? ... stalled . And they don ' t seem to care .
To the average person in the congregation , the music sounds fine . But you know your band could be sooo much better . And now , with the live streaming of every service ( thank you , COVID ), you ' ve become painfully aware of how painfully unaware your team is about how they ' look ' on the platform .
You ' ve got instrumentalists glued to their charts like they ' ve never seen the song before . Then there are the singers with the tractor beam eyeball-lock on the confidence monitor . Several members are worshiping , but it ' s more about having a ' personal Jesus-and-me time ' on the platform . They ' re lost in their own experience with zero regard for the congregation they ' re supposed to be leading in worship .
And then there ' s that one person on your